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.”“Bec has a theory about that,” I told him confidentially.“He banks on there being a civilisation here.Where there’s a civilisation there has to be mobsters.Once we contact them we can learn how they operate, what the angles are.Then we move in.”Simple.It takes a genius like Bec to see things that simple.Reeth snorted delightedly.“And what if these other mobsters don’t like us, if they wipe us out?”“Bec has an angle there too,” I said, grinning ruefully.“I hope he’s right.He reckons we should be smarter than they are.Life here on Earth is a lot easier than where we come from.In Klittmann we were struggling for survival since we were born.It’s a law of evolution that we’ll be better in the survival business than they are.”“Well, maybe,” Reeth sighed.“It all sounds pretty theoretical to me.I trust facts, not theories.”“You can trust Bec.Who else could have got us out of that jam in Klittmann?”“Who else could have got us into that jam? Klein, I’m wondering what will happen if we don’t find any food.How long will this mob hang together if we don’t find some action soon? If you ask me Bec’s dipping into a pack and hoping to draw a card that isn’t even there.”He sighed and indicated the stretching prairie.“I don’t understand why we can’t eat this stuff.”“Maybe it’s like raw protein straight out of the tank,” I surmised.“It could be that it has to be processed.”“But that needs factories and skilled technicians.If life’s like that on Earth too then we’ve got it all wrong.”Regardless of my secret oath of loyalty to Bec, I couldn’t think of an answer.We went back down the hill to report.Hassmann, Grale and Bec were playing cards.Tone the Taker sat skulking by himself some yards away.He had a miserable existence on the sloop; none of the mob deigned to notice him, apart from Bec, and Bec was too busy to bother with him.Now he sat clutching his box of pop, which he almost never put down.He was trying hard to ration himself, but the supply was dwindling day by day and his situation was pretty desperate.Lately his twitches had become more pronounced, which made the others despise him all the more despite that their fortunes in Klittmann had been partly founded on pop.Only Harmen treated him like a human being, and now the alk also sat by himself, apparently contemplating.As the sun went down everybody disappeared one by one into the sloop to get some sleep, until I was alone with Bec again.I told him about Reeth’s misgivings, and added my own for good measure.Bec was just finishing a tube of weed.He threw the stub down.He said: “When a bullet is fired from a gun, sometimes it hits its target, and sometimes it misses.Whether it hits or not, it carries the same force.It can’t do anything else.I’m that bullet.”“So that’s all there is to it,” I said dully.“We missed.”“Not at all.I’m a bullet with a name written on it.You know the old saying: sooner or later the bullet’s going to hit the guy with that name.In other words, I’ve got a destination.Maybe it looks hopeless to you.But not to me, or to Harmen either.”“Harmen?”Bec smiled, “You ought to talk to Harmen some time, Klein.He’s got quite an outlook.I get inspiration from listening to him.He makes everything sound like a big machine that just has to keep on working.And the laws of the machine are the same on Killibol, on Earth, or anywhere in the universe.”“All right,” I said with a shrug, “so what?”“So if a thing will work in one place it will work in another.Take the lever: the principle of the lever is the same everywhere.You need a load, a fulcrum, and a force.You boys, yourself, Grale, Reeth and Hassmann, are my lever.I’m the force.Together we make up a machine, a lever that moved things for us back there in Klittmann.So why shouldn’t it move things for us in the same way here? It will, once we find the right angle.We need a load to move and the right fulcrum.Then we have power.”I shook my head.“It’s a little too abstract for me.”I decided to change the subject.“You’re going to have trouble with Grale, Bec.He’s getting wild.”Bec laughed shortly.“Grale’s a good man.He’s dependable.But for you, he’d be my second.That puzzles you, doesn’t it?”“Yes,” I admitted sourly.He laughed again.“I grant you Reeth is smarter, but then he’s got that individualistic streak.He’s always liable to take off on his own.Grale is always shooting off his big mouth, but he sticks with it every time.”“Doesn’t it bother you that we hate one another’s guts?”“No, it doesn’t.It keeps you both on your toes.” My resentment seemed to amuse him.“You’ve still got a few things to learn about leadership, Klein.”Maybe I had.There was still something left to learn about Becmath, too.On the seventh day we found the village.SixScents.That was the first thing I noticed as we poised on the breast of the hill overlooking the village.A mingle of scents drifting in through the sloop’s windows.Killibol people have a dulled sense of smell (only much later did I learn what a sharp, musty odour Klittmann has) and mine was awakening gradually.I remember that instance above the village as a small moment of truth.The hill descended in a series of terraces to a cluster of buildings with quaint curved roofs; they appeared to be arranged in streets.The scents were breezing up from slender trees and giant trumpet-shaped flowers that grew on the terraces and had the appearance of being cultivated.There was music drifting up the hillside, too.It was cordial and relaxed and made you think of beautiful things — quite unlike the jerky, frenetic music of Klittmann.Bec beckoned Harmen to sit with him.“What do you think?”We peered at the figures that were moving about the village.“It looks peaceful,” the alk said.“Make friendly contact.”Bec nodded and began to lower us carefully down the hillside.The buildings grew larger as the sloop groaned downwards terrace by terrace.When we were about halfway something whanged in through the window and ricocheted about inside.I yelled an order: in no time at all the shutters were down, closed to slits.A shower of tiny missiles rained against the hull with spitting sounds.Reeth was peering through a slit.“There’s a bunch of guys on the outskirts of the village shooting at us with guns of some kind.”“O.K.,” Bec said instantly, “use one of the Hackers.Just a few shells.”“Is that wise?” I asked.“We don’t know what these people have to back them up.”“We’ve got to show them we can fight, too,” Bec said tightly.“The Hacker, Reeth.”Reeth obliged.Hacker shells landed amongst the firing party and in a brief shower around the village [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]